If You Traveled on the Underground Railroad Jigsaw Activity

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Objectives:

  • Understand injustices by learning about the life of slave
  • Expand background knowledge on the topic
  • Reads a non-fiction text and takes notes
  • Paraphrase using own words
  • Publishes and presents work using technology


Method:
Our first Social Studies unit of the year was Slavery and the Underground Railroad. The girls had a lot of background knowledge on the topic, but they had several questions, many of which came up during our KWL chart discussion at the beginning of the unit. 

One of the first activities in this unit was a jigsaw activity using the class set of books If You Traveled on the Underground Railroad. I put the girls into pairs, and in one case a group of three, and divided the questions from the book into seven sections. Each small group received a recording sheet and were instructed to take notes on their section of the book. The girls were given one class period to read and gather information. I moved around the room and monitored their note-taking, answering questions and prompting students to write more details in some cases.



During the next class, the girls created Google Slide presentations to share the main points and interesting facts they learned during their reading. The girls were given one class period to work on their presentations and share them with me. If groups finished before the period was over, I instructed them to come up with discussion questions to pose to the class in response to the information they shared.



Same slide presentation: 

During the next class, each group presented their slides to the class. We had a class discussion about the information shared and added a few items to the "Learned" column in our KWL chart. 



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